Did you know that 1.3 million people living in the US go on business trips every day?
In 2021, business travel contributed to 20% of the world’s travel and tourism expenditure, and the corporate travel market is expected to grow by 188% in 2028.
Managing business travel is an extensive and crucial function. It must comply with the organization’s internal travel policies, achieve cost-effectiveness, and have critical control over corporate travel processes.
The need of the hour is for businesses to adopt a highly advanced corporate travel AI software solution that can help them reduce travel expenses, reduce unnecessary approvals, ease the recording, reporting, and reimbursing process, and customize travel-related expenses to fit them in the prescribed budget.
Here is an overview of what travel management software is, what it includes, and how it helps in reducing travel expenses!
What is Travel Management Software?
Employees must travel extensively to expand businesses, attend conferences, deliver presentations, service consumers across the globe, or enhance their skills through various training programs. Travel Management Software is an AI-empowered advanced solution that automates business expense management, complies with internal and external business travel policies, and captures every related expense.
The primary objective of using business travel booking and recording software is to streamline business travel and mitigate exhaustive travel expenses.
Top 10 Ways in Which Travel Management Software Reduces Expenses and Enhances Budget
Here are some ways in which travel management software mitigates business expenses:
1. Detects Policy Violations
Travel management software is a SaaS-based solution that records every activity related to travel. If there is any violation from the assigned budget or travel-related policy, the software will immediately flag the expense and give a heads-up to authorities
2. The Convenience of Expense Submission
Gone are the days when the traveling employees were required to maintain paper bills and invoices and go through the hassle of reporting and recording the same for reimbursement purposes. With the help of advanced software, travelers simply need to take pictures and upload real-time expenses on the software.
The software does the rest of the job of compilation, verification, approval, reporting, and reimbursement.
3. Single Destination for Recording All Travel-based Needs and Expenses
Travel management software is available as a smartphone app to all stakeholders and is a one-stop shop for all information related to corporate travel. Everything happens on this single platform: making group bookings, getting travel tickets, working on visa approvals, booking hotel stays, arranging for group conferences, or working towards travel expense charts.
4. Round-the-clock Consumer Support
The best feature of employing corporate travel software is gaining access to 24/7 support to resolve queries, acknowledge concerns, make emergency changes, and provide a seamless travel experience to employees.
5. Centralized System
This software works as a centralized system to create travel expense reports and forward the same to the concerned department for reimbursements. This paperless process saves a lot of time and effort and thus works towards mitigating overall expenditures.
6. Prevent Forging, Inaccuracies, and Duplication
Time saved in business means saving costs. A lot of financial losses emerged from the manual management of corporate travel since the traditional techniques were not equipped with cost-saving measures. However, travel management software emerges as a winner and helps in reducing errors, omissions, and fraudulent transactions. It eventually leads to saving costs.
7. 100% Transparency into Travel Expenses
One of the key benefits of deploying corporate travel software is to gain visibility into every travel expense, get to the root cause and need of every expenditure, and help managers make informed decisions regarding these unwanted expenses. Based on the recording and reporting of all travel expenses, the leaders are better positioned to design sophisticated ways to curb exorbitant expenses and streamline the travel-related budget and expenses.
8. Helps in Data Analytics
You have all travel expense reports at the tip of your fingers. One-click, and you can access previous travel information or estimate upcoming travel costs. The software helps manage expense reports, empowers finance teams to scrutinize the viability of each expense, creates structured reports on minute details related to business travel booking, and prepares for reimbursement.
9. Encourages Faster Approvals
Maintaining software and providing access to key stakeholders improves the process of acquiring instant approvals. This saves the time and money of keeping travel-related monetary aspects on hold and provides integrated solutions in expediting the reporting and reimbursement process.
10. Recognize Trends
When a business can gauge trends in business travel bookings, expenses, and reimbursements, it becomes much easier for them to control unwanted expenditures. The rich data repository helps determine cost leakages, detect details on vendors and suppliers, promotes solid negotiation, creates realistic travel schedules and budgets, and finally helps in mitigating overall travel expenses.
Conclusion
Travel management software is the best tool to track and store travel expenses on a single platform. It is a highly recommended solution to detect fraud on a real-time basis, showcase spend visibility, optimize travel costs, and assess travel workflows. The software is a unified communication that automates approval workflows and expense claims. The bottom line is that travel management software provides comprehensive insights into detailed spending on corporate travel!